I was trying to install Docker on my Linode virtual private server so that I could experiment with containers. I had a problem with the error “no supported platform found in manifest list.” Eventually, I realized that dpkg --print-architecture showed that my Ubuntu package architecture was i386 even though my server was 64-bit. That was probably due to upgrading in-place through the years, starting with a 32-bit version of Ubuntu 10.

I tried dpkg --add-architecture amd64, which let me install the docker-ce package from the Docker repository. Unfortunately, I didn't review it carefully enough (the perils of SSHing from my cellphone), and installing that removed a bunch of other i386 packages like sudo, ssh, and screen. Ooops!

Even though we've been working on weaning lately, I decided that letting A- nurse a long time in her sleep might give me a little time to try to fix things. I used Linode's web-based console to try to log in. I forgot the root password, so I used their tool for resetting the root password. After I got that sorted out, though, I found that I couldn't resolve network resources. I'd broken the system badly enough that I needed to use another rescue tool to mount my drives, chroot to them, and install stuff from there. I was still getting stuck. I needed more focused time.

Fortunately, I'd broken my server during the weekend, so W- was around to take care of A- while I tried to figure things out. I had enough free space to create another root partition and install Ubuntu 16, which was a straightforward process with Linode's Deploy Image tool.

I spent a few hours trying to figure out if I could set everything up in Docker containers from the start. I got the databases working, but I kept getting stymied by annoying WordPress redirection issues even after setting home and siteurl in the database and defining them in my config file. I tried adding Nginx reverse proxying to the mix, and it got even more tangled.

Eventually, I gave up and went back to running the services directly on my server. Because I did the new install in a separate volume, it was easy to mount the old volume and copy or symlink my configuration files.

Just in case I need to do this again, here are the packages that apt says I installed:

• General:
  • screen
  • apt-transport-https
  • ca-certificates
  • curl
  • dirmngr
  • gnupg
  • software-properties-common
  • borgbackup
• For the blog:
  • mysql-server
  • php-fpm
  • php-mysql
  • php-xml
• For Quantified Awesome:
  • ruby-bundler
  • ruby-dev
• For experimenting:
  • docker-compose
• For compiling Emacs:
  • make
  • gcc
  • g++
  • zlib1g-dev
  • libmysqlclient-dev
  • autoconf
  • texinfo
  • gnutls-dev
  • ncurses-dev
• From external repositories:
  • docker-ce
  • nginx-extras passenger
  • nodejs
  • syncthing

I got the list by running:

zgrep 'Commandline: apt' /var/log/apt/history.log /var/log/apt/history.log.*.gz

I saved my selections with dpkg --get-selections so that I can load them with dpkg --set-selections << ...; apt-get dselect-upgrade if I need to do this again.

Symbolic links to old volume:

• /var/www
• /usr/local
• /home/sacha
• /var/lib/mysql (after installing)

Copied after installing – I'll probably want to tidy this up:

• /etc/nginx/sites-available
• /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

Lessons learned:

• Actually check the list of packages to remove.
• Consider fresh installs for major upgrades.

When things settle down, I should probably look into organizing one of the volumes as a proper data volume so that I can cleanly reinstall the root partition whenever I want to.

I also want to explore Docker again – maybe once I've wrapped my mind around how Docker, Nginx, WordPress, Passenger, virtual hosts, and subdirectories all fit together. Still, I'm glad I got my site up and running again!